time Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Writers' strike got you down? Wondering how to fill those late-night hours now that all the talk shows are on hiatus? I've got just the answer for you: Asian films on DVD! All three of these newly-released films are sure to provoke, though I'm not sure they'll prepare you for sleep as well as Jon Stewart or Craig Ferguson.

Johnny To's Election brilliantly details a clash of triad titans in Hong Kong. Every two years an election is held to determine a crime gang's new boss; both Simon Yam, a suave yet savage family man, and Tony Leung Kar-Fai, a brutal and much feared lieutenant, want the job. Director To generates tension with great subtlety, and the story has several surprises up its sleeve. The DVD includes a "making of" feature and interviews with the director and stars.

Cinematical's Jeffrey M. Anderson wrote a beautiful review of Tsai Ming-liang's latest film, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, explaining how it fits into the director's ouevre and concluding: "The pleasure here belongs to Tsai's images, which can be both familiar and baffling, or beautiful and humorously deadpan, or realistic and supernatural. It's best to give up ideas of plot, story and characters and just explore these amazing images, one by one." The DVD includes the original theatrical trailer, which can be viewed at Moviefone.

Our friends at Moviefone also have the trailer for Kim Ki-Duk's Time, which in no way prepares you for how infuriating the film proves to be. I agree with Martha Fischer, who wrote: "The problem with Time is that every character in the film is so fundamentally repulsive it's impossible to care about any of them." Still, as I've written before, Kim's films are visually beautiful and told in an indelible narrative style, and that might be enough to justify a rental if you're curious. The DVD includes a "making of" feature and the trailer.

I expected Kim Ki-Duk's Breath to cause some kind of stir when it played at Cannes last month. It was the provocative Korean director's first selection in the Official Competition, which normally draws greater critical attention. But it seems that Breath screened and everyone yawned. David Hudson gathered the reactions at GreenCine Daily; the trades were generally positive, if not exactly enthusiastic (Dan Fainaru in Screen Daily: "Works wonders within the minimalist conditions"; Derek Elley in Variety: "Will play best to Kim's existing fan club"; Ray Bennett in The Hollywood Reporter: "Unlikely ... to make much headway beyond those who are already fans"), and Mike D'Angelo of ScreenGrab speculated that it would be memorable only because it's the one in which "his predilection for mute protagonists officially became intolerable even to his fans." In the recent past, Variety film critic Robert Koehler called Kim "South Korea's worst filmmaker"; blogging for filmjourney.org, he wrote that the director "surprised no one -- except perhaps Derek Elley -- with Breath, which was screened and mercifully forgotten."

Mercy, indeed! Reviewing Kim's previous film, Time, Koehler wrote: "As always with Kim, under the frantic and bloody surface, underneath is ... nothing." Kim's films are visually beautiful and told in an indelible narrative style, but are attractive surfaces enough? Some of his work has struck me as thematically repellant (Bad Guy, The Bow, Time), yet the imagery in others (The Coast Guard, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring) has stayed with me for years. Breath features a young married woman who discovers that her husband is cheating on her and decides to have an affair with an imprisoned murderer. Tartan has acquired all US rights. Whenever it becomes available -- most likely direct to DVD -- we can see if the critics are right.

There are few surprises in the initial slate of submissions for Best Foreign Picture. Last year's submissions were fraught with controversy, as Austria's French-language entry, Caché was deemed ineligible by the Academy along with Italy's entry, Private, which was dinged for featuring Arabic and Hebrew but no Italian. This year a rule change has gone into effect that allows foreign picture submissions to feature any combination of languages (not just the dominant language of the submitting country) so long as the primary language is not English.

Canada's submission, the first to take advantage of the new rule, is Deepa Mehta's Water, a Hindi-language film starring Canadian-born actress Lisa Ray. Mehta, though born in India, is herself a Canadian resident. Water was the third in Mehta's controversial and political "elements" trilogy that started with Earth and Fire, and features a story centered around the plight of widows in India, who are often relegated to life of poverty. The tale of what Mehta went through just to make this film could be a movie in and of itself. Initially set to film in India, the set was shut down after numerous death threats when the Indian government determined it could not ensure Mehta's safety, and didn't start filming again for over three years.

Late in Time, a character suddenly looks into the camera wearing a life-sized mask of her own face, complete with eye shadow and lipstick. Had the movie worked to that point, the moment would have been chilling, reducing the audience to a stunned silence. As it is, however, the scene is greeted by shouts of incredulous laughter; for viewers like myself, it's the point at which we realize there's no redemption ahead, and we're never going to make the emotional connection director Kim Ki-duk seems certain he's created.

Based on a fascinating topic -- the allure of plastic surgery, not for enhancement but for renewal -- Time is a story loaded with potential. As the film opens, Seh-hee (Park Ji-Yeon) and Ji-woo (Ha Jung-woo) have a terrible fight that stems from him having the temerity to lay his eyes on another woman. Later in bed, Seh-hee apologizes over and over for always having the "same boring face," and begs him to imagine one of the women they fought over as they make love. The next day, she's gone, ending a two-year relationship without a word.